They didn’t come anywhere close to the entire content library, the 300TB represents about 33% of Spotify, though it is close to 100% of the played music.
To be completely fair, I am not certain what it means for a track to be "virtually unplayed".
First off, it was striking to me how little of the "top 10 000" they published back on Christmas I recognize. I'm not sure what I expected, but 10 000 sounds like a big number, so it seemed likely to me, that if I get a random song from my playlist I could find it there. It turned out I hardly can find an artist I recognize. Ok, I can recall a song from Lady Gaga and even Billie Eilish, I've heard of Bruno Mars (cannot recall any song), but I have no idea what is "Bad Bunny", "Doechii", "Drake". I mean, I think I do have a pretty good idea what these things are (abstractly), and I probably wouldn't want to listen that. And while I knew that all this stuff is very popular, I didn't quite realize how little place in the top-10000 it leaves for the music I (and everyone I know) actually listen to.
I didn't download the metadata they released (it would be hard to process it on my laptop anyway), but now I wonder how much of my 3 TB music collection is in top 100 000, or heck, even top 1M Spotify, or on Spotify at all.
I also am sometimes surprised how little scrobbles some tracks get. I didn't bother to find out what this means, how many people still scrobble to Last.fm or ListenBrainz, but it is just surprising when I see that a track that I didn't consider to be obscure was scrobbled like 50 times this year.
So I'm saying that music worlds seems to be terribly fragmented, even more than I imagined. So the very premise of AA backing-up 97% of Spotify (by the number of plays) may be much lesser achievement at "preserving culture" than it may sound. And of course we are about 8 years too late to backup everything, since by now half of it must be generative NN bullshit. And I'm not even sure it's in those leftover 3% (bots listen to bot-generated music too, right)?
You might not listen, but surely you have heard of Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and of course Christmas Staples of Mariah Carey and Wham?
First off, this is not the top we are talking about, since there is one that AA provided[0]. I am not sure what it matters which names exactly I've heard of, but if you are that curious: I don't know what is Ed Sheeran and Wham (but cannot vouch I've never heard their music in a supermarket), but I definitely remember "Coldplay" being mentioned in a joke onstage by a NIN member[1], but I didn't bother to check out what they are. I can imagine the faces of Taylor Swift & Justin Bieber, but cannot name any song, and I'm sure I've heard Mariah Carey somewhere, since that name is around longer than Rihanna. I have a song or two of Ariana Grande in my playlist though.
Are you sure? See, my point is a conjecture (based on a reasonable assumption that I cannot be that special), that there must be really a lot of us "outliers" out there (so I'm not even sure it's reasonable to call us that).
Let's reiterate. I am well aware that more people listen to that Bad Rabbit, Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber than they listen to <random name from my playilist>, it's not really a surprise. There even is a special name for people like that, it's "celebrity". In fact, that's probably how most people who are into music (including myself, I might say) would categorize them, as "celebrities", not as "musicians" (though, mind you, of course they are musicians, as everyone who ever sang a song is, it's just that when I hear the word "musician" I don't necessarily think of Taylor Swift). Hence these people indulge themselves for not knowing who these guys are, explaining it that "they are not into celebrities".
And it's no surprise that a lot of people listen to celebrities. I mean, if Trump would release a song right now, it would become #1 on Spotify in no time (for a very short time, but still). Well, maybe not #1, but close.
But I also suppose there are a lot of people who are into music. Maybe not so many, as there are people who are into celebrities, but it's still a lot. And after seeing that top-10 000 I suddenly find it very plausible, that a lot of tracks these people call "massive hits" may turn out to be "virtually unplayed". And hence not in those "97% of Spotify (by # of plays)" that AA archived. I am not even claiming it, I'm just saying that this doesn't seem to be impossible.
For instance, any DnB fan would say that "everyone knows Noisia and Black Sun Empire". It would be absolutely laughable attempt at "preserving human culture" not to include them. Surely all of their tracks must be at least in top-5M, right? Well, after seeing top 10K I'm not so sure anymore.
Maybe you've never heard of them, but surely you've heard of Prodigy. Not a single track from Prodigy on top-10K. Or Chemical Brothers. Or Burial, or Placebo, or Nighwish, or King Crimson. These are very famous names in respective circles. There are 2 tracks from Massive Attack — both featured in super-famous movies and trending on TikTok right now. For God's sake, there are only 8 tracks from Madonna in top 10K. Versus 26 from Imagine Dragons and 124 from "Bad Bunny", whatever it is. How do you like Madonna for an obscure artist?
So, my point is that there may be a lot of people listening almost exclusively to "virtually unplayed" music. Entire discographies of (niche) cult-artists may turn out to be buried in these 66% of "virtually unplayed" tracks.
I guess I should just get the metadata and check, but I'm pretty sure that would be outside of capabilities of the hardware I have on hand, so I'm not sure how to go about that.
1) 10,000 tracks really is not a lot. It sounds like a lot, but isn't. My own - relatively small - collection is nearly double that.
2) 10,000 tracks... out of 256,000,000 that AA archived.
I'd be very interested to see some more analysis done on this, particularly as it relates to, say, Last.fm statistics - but I suspect the missing music is not as significant as you think.
In any case, even if every one of those "niche" artists you list are missing from this collection, I don't think it's fair to say it's a "laughable attempt" - it's certainly better than nothing, even if it's not perfect.
The funny thing is, since the advent of streaming I no longer listen to the radio. I listen to new music, but little pop music, and I have never heard a single track from Swift, Bieber, Grande or Sheeran. Coldplay is the only act I like on that list, and the streaming services are pretty good at only playing what I like.
If they were pre-streaming artists I probably would have heard a lot of their catalog because radio played it over and over. Unfortunately you just can’t get away from the Christmas music.
